Photography websites: the secret to making a photo blog everyone will read

How to Make Popular Photography Websites: how to prepare a photo for blogging

Before you upload any photos to your photography website, it’s a good idea to go through a few simple steps to prepare them for sharing online.

Most importantly, you will want to resize photos. There are a few good reasons for this, first of all, most photo blogging platforms provide a limited amount of space, and reducing an image’s size is a good way to maximise the amount of images you can include on your photo blog.

Secondly, reducing the resolution of your images makes them less appealing to would-be online image thieves who may visit your photography website. If you wish, you can add a watermark to an image to further deter thieves.

It’s also a good idea to rename your files as well, for a couple of reasons.

Here we look at the various ways to prepare your photo using Photoshop Elements, or if you’re stuck for time, using the free online photo editing website, Pixlr Express.

How to resize photos for your photography websites

For most photography websites, images don’t need to be any wider than 1000 pixels. You’ll also want to change the resolution to 72dpi, since an on-screen display doesn’t need as many dots as a print.

Once you’ve opened your image in the main Photoshop Elements window, there are two ways you can resize the image. Select the Crop tool from the panel on the left.

In the boxes at the top of the screen, enter 1000 pixels in the Width box – you can leave the height box clear. In the resolution box simply type 72. Now drag the cursor across your whole image and hit the green tick.

If you prefer you select Image > Resize > Image Size from the main menu. Type “1000 pixels” in the top box and tick “Constrain proportions” to have the program automatically fill in the height box.

Again, type in 72 in the resolution box. Hit the OK button and your image will be the correct size.

If you have a lot of images that you want to upload to your photography websites in one go, a Batch Edit can save you lots of time.
First of all, gather all of the photos that you want to resize into one folder.

Next, select File > Process Multiple Folders. A dialogue box will appear, in the Source area, navigate to the folder on your computer where the images are stored.

You will also need to choose a destination folder, it’s a good idea to create a separate one from the original folder.

In the Image Size section of the box, enter 1000 pixels and 72dpi. You can leave the height blank again, so long as the Constrain Proportions box is ticked.

If you want to add a watermark to your photos, you can do this within the Process Multiple Files box – simply type in some custom text in the appropriate section of the box.

If you want to have more control over the placement of your watermark, simply open up your image and select the Text tool from the panel. In the Layers panel, reduce the Opacity to around 20% so it doesn’t disturb your image too much.

Remember, when you save your file, it’s a good idea to give it a more unique name than “Image 0001.”

Using a descriptive name such as “Cotswolds-landscapes-01” not only helps with the organisation of your photo blog, but is more likely to be picked up by search engines.

When processing multiple files, don’t forget there’s an option to rename all of the files as well.

Pixlr Express

If you need to quickly resize an image, an online image editor can be a good place to do that. Pixlr Express includes lots of editing functions, but the resize option is what we’re interested in for now.

Once you’ve opened your photo in the editor, click “Adjustment”, followed by “Resize”. You can now enter 1000 pixels in the width box, leaving the height box empty. Once that’s done, simply click save, rename your file and you’re good to go.

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